The Law Gets an Upgrade (Level 2 | 38)

You're on a journey through the Bible to experience the epic story of God and to learn your

part to play in the unfolding drama.

Prepare for your role as you learn your history, your enemy, and your kingdom.

Welcome to the Bible Brief.

Join us today as we begin to hear the teaching of Messiah.

Jesus explains the law of Moses and heightens the righteous requirements of the law.

Before listening to the Bible, breathe.

When the remnant of Jews came back from their Babylonian and Persian exile, away from

the land, they came back with a new fervor for the law that God had given the nation.

These were the rules for life that God gave them that would allow them to live a blessed

life in the land, and they sought to follow them to a tea.

The priest Ezra had taught them the law and explained it to the returned exiles so that

they could be sure to do what it said.

No one wanted to be exiled from the land again, so they listened intently and taught their

children after them.

For hundreds of years after Ezra, they continued to pass down this teaching in this fervor

for obedience to the law.

And this was especially the case among the religious elite of Judea.

However, in the midst of this, something else creeped in, a subtlety that needs to be understood

to give context to the ministry of Jesus.

Some of the Jews began to believe that they could actually follow the law completely

to obey it to the uttermost.

They thought that they could earn the blessing of God through their perfect obedience.

That righteousness was attainable through their obedience to the law.

They'd forgotten that faith alone is the key to righteousness.

So over time, different factions of Jews emerged that began to take varying and contradictory

views of the law.

They added rules around the law.

They attempted to find loopholes.

They reprioritized and they essentially retrofitted the law to allow them to measure their

own obedience.

Instead of listening to and following the law itself, they began to elevate a different

and twisted understanding of the law.

Following a new law for themselves, they thought they could ensure blessing in the land.

Among these factions was a significant group called the Pharisees.

In the Pharisees, they had little rules and regulations for everything under the sun.

A good example is the Sabbath.

A day originally commanded by God to be set apart where no work was to be done.

Rest was the command.

Well instead of simply sticking to the law revealed by God, the Pharisees developed specific

definitions and exceptions and detail after detail on how to fulfill this requirement to

rest on this Sabbath.

They had specific definitions on what constituted work and on what didn't constitute work.

How far could you walk on this Sabbath?

They had a rule for that.

Was helping during an emergency considered work?

They had an answer for that.

What were the exceptions to each of the rules?

They had it all figured out.

All these innovative details allowed them to easily point fingers at others for disobeying

this Sabbath.

These rules allowed them to have mental scoreboards and rankings.

That is, since the details were set, measurement was possible and preferable.

After all, they figured, if what they wanted was God's blessing, they'd need to be able

to enforce righteousness in as many ways as possible.

Blessing in the land required it, and so they saw themselves as doing nothing less than

God's work.

Now, remember the primary purpose of the law given by God through Moses was to govern

the nation of Israel in the land.

These laws were to preserve and set apart the Israelites from all the other nations,

and they were to demonstrate the righteousness and justice of God to all those other nations.

But the law had another purpose, too.

It was to demonstrate the people's dependence upon God.

The whole sacrificial system itself was a demonstration of the people's sin and dependence

upon God for righteousness.

People's inability to follow the law wholly was a reminder to them that they needed God's

righteousness applied to them by faith, faith like their forefather, Abraham.

It's the second purpose of dependence and faith that was substantially de-emphasized

in the professional Jewish life of Jesus' day.

The innovative law of the Pharisees and other groups was a law for earning the approval

and blessing of God.

Faith was necessary, sure, but not perhaps as essential as obedience to these other detailed

rules and regulations.

It's in this context that Jesus delivers his most famous sermon to a large crowd in

the northern part of Judea in Galilee.

This is the beginning of the so-called sermon on the Mount, where Jesus describes people

who are citizens of his kingdom.

He says this.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom

of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil

against you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they

persecuted the prophets before you.

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its savor, how can it be made salty

again?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

You are the light of the world, a city on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket.

Instead they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and

glorify your Father in heaven.

These words are some of the highest concentration of blessing in the Bible.

Jesus is essentially saying effectively, joy and happiness are with people like this.

People of the kingdom are adopted as sons of God, and despite having difficulties, they

will be comforted and satisfied.

This is a remarkable preamble to a magnificent sermon.

And soon Jesus shifts to an all-important subject.

He shifts to the law and puts the scribes in the Pharisees on notice.

He says,

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke

of a pin will disappear from the law until everything is accomplished.

So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do

likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches

them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

You can imagine being one of those Pharisees listening to Jesus right here.

Jesus elevates the complete Old Testament, including the commands and the law, and then

he says that relaxing them or finding loopholes like the Pharisees had done would put you at

the bottom of the ranks in heaven.

Further, he says that unless you are more righteous than the Pharisees, you won't even enter

the kingdom.

You can imagine how upset some of the Pharisees must have been to hear these words.

They considered themselves to be as righteous as one could be, but they kept listening,

and from here, Jesus gives example after example of the law, explaining the true meaning

and application of it.

He even has a consistent format.

He does it like this.

He says, you've heard it said, followed by a common understanding of a law, and then

he says, but I say to you, followed by an explanation of the moral principle and application

of a law.

Here's an example.

Jesus says, you've heard that it was said, do not commit adultery, but I tell you that

anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her

in his heart.

Jesus goes all the way to the Ten Commandments and says that the prohibition of adultery is

not simply a prohibition from physical adultery.

Know the command actually carries with it a non-lust principle, where looking with lustful

intent was itself a violation of the law.

In this small sentence, Jesus heightens the commandment to an even more difficult standard

than was preached by those like the Pharisees.

He introduces a critical problem for the Pharisees too.

For those who wanted to see a righteousness scoreboard, seeing into someone's heart and

intentions was a huge problem.

How can you see inside someone's heart to enforce a law?

This heightening of the law is characteristic of the teaching of Jesus, and he continues

to do it throughout his ministry.

Jesus provides a necessary correction to the measuring of righteousness by the Pharisees.

They wanted to measure everyone against one another, and Jesus was communicating something

radically different.

He was saying, you'll never measure up.

Outside of God and outside of his help, obedience to the law isn't attainable.

The thing is, Jesus wasn't saying anything new about people's inability to actually

follow the law.

In fact, by the end of the book of Deuteronomy, way back when Moses is speaking to the

people, we even see this principle.

In Deuteronomy 30, it's God who causes obedience and love.

It says this, the Lord your God will change your hearts and the hearts of your descendants,

and you will love him with all your heart and with all your soul so that you may live.

Here we see that God's heart-changing work is the necessary ingredient for true obedience

to the law.

Faith in God becomes the bridge between God's power to obey and man's need to obey.

Faith is the key to righteousness because faith in God opens the flow of God's righteousness

into the life of a believer.

Jesus is expressing a truth that's already buried in the law, and he was bringing it to

light again.

He was saying you can't measure up, and yet he was saying that by God's power, you will

be righteous.

But Jesus' expression of this truth had contrasting responses.

It is directly related to the message you was preaching.

It turns out that faith determined the contrasting responses to the teaching of Jesus.

The faithful respond positively, while the self-righteous respond negatively.

It's significant that the very next thing that happens after this sermon is that Jesus

heals a man's skin disease before commanding him to do something.

When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him.

Suddenly a leper came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, if you are willing, you can

make me clean.

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.

I am willing, he said, be clean, and immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

The faith of this leper, the man with the skin disease, is demonstrated in his understanding

that Jesus can heal him.

He recognizes Jesus' authority and he simply asks him to exercise that authority.

And Jesus, for his part, responds to the man's faith by healing his skin disease.

But then comes the command.

Jesus instructed him, see that you don't tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest

and offer the gift prescribed by Moses as a testimony to them.

Not only did Jesus heal the man, but he demonstrates the same teaching about the law that

he spoke in the sermon on the Mount.

He commanded that the healed man follow the law by offering the gift commanded in the

law.

And Jesus says that this is a testimony to them, a proof to those who accused Jesus of neglecting

the law.

Apparently, they thought that because Jesus rejected the fair essayical edition of rules

and regulations to the plain law, that he rejected the law of Moses in its entirety.

But no, here with the healed man, Jesus is proving that he followed the law, the true

law given by God.

In fact, through his ministry, Jesus continually proves that he hadn't come to abolish

the law, but instead to fulfill it.

He understood that the law was deeper than merely the words of it.

The law was also the moral principles behind the words.

Remember his example.

People adultery is not permitted, but neither is looking upon a woman with lustful intent.

Jesus not only emphasizes the law, but heightens it.

He heightens it to the point of saying that those of the kingdom would have to be even

more righteous than those apparently righteous Pharisees.

The question is, how would the nation respond?

Would there be faith in Israel like the faith of the leper?

Or would there be self-righteousness in doubt, preferring their own way to the way of Jesus?

Well these contrasts of response will endure.

People full of faith continue to respond positively to Jesus in his message, but concurrently.

Hostility builds from the religious leaders who don't like what Jesus is saying about

the law, nor about them.

For these rebellious, the wheels of the mind begin to turn toward twisting a different

commandment of the Big Ten.

Perhaps murder could solve this Jesus problem.

Join us next time as we see more responses to Jesus in his message as he continues to

challenge the Jews of his day with his profound teaching about God and about the law.

We'll see Jesus compare a Pharisee to one of those hated tax collectors and see what

a prayer of genuine faith really looks like.

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